Dinner for 3 with several beers: £60

This meal began with an email from Inge (of whom I have written before and who’s taste in food is impeccable) saying that she and Jackie had eaten in a Szechuan restaurant and had thought of me and would I like to join them for a meal.  Silly question really.

When I arrived Inge was running a little late so Jackie and I started off with some beers and lamb shashlik which I’ve never seen on a Szechuan menu before. But regardless of its authenticity to the Szechuan region of China you should definitely order if you should ever eat here because it is amazing.  It was so amazing that I was not at all concerned about it being served on a child’s plastic Christmas themed plate.  It could have arrived in a shoe I still would have eaten it.

We opted to skip any other starters and ordered three mains instead.  The first was aubergine with peppers and potatoes in a garlic sauce.  It was divine.  This is not a dish to order on a first date however as all three of us absolutely reeked of garlic for quite some time after the meal.

Next was spicy beef with chili.  I had hoped that the dish would melt my face off but it was surprisingly mild.  I wouldn’t order it again if only for the fact that it was just fine – but not fantastic.

My favorite dish of the evening was their version of chili crab.  This is not the chili crab you would get in Singapore.  I.e. its not saucy.  It is a pungent and fragrant dish of deep fried crab smothered in whole szechuan peppercorns and dried chilis.  The perfume of the dish was incredible.

The restaurant no longer has only 2 menus in English – they have plenty now and the service was quite a bit friendlier than I had expected.  I would still get there early as there was a line out the door by the time we were done with our meal.

Gourmet San
261 Bethnal Green Rd
London, E2 6

This entry was posted on Wednesday, November 25th, 2009 at 4:56 pm and is filed under Chinese, London, Moderate, Restaurants. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.